I’ve now been playing WofW for a few weeks and have very quickly come to some conclusions. If I have these thoughts, others have too.

Levelling
I’ve gotten most of my characters to lvl 5, which IMO is appropriate level advancement for this stage in the game. D&D lvl advancements are supposed to be slow and earned. That being said, I got stonewalled trying to get to lvl 6. You can read multiple threads on this problem. It’s brutal. The product manager should be completely to blame here.

Subscription
The subscription is beyond a joke. At first I thought $20 must get you some really good stuff. Nope. It gets you a few more gems and gold. After recognizing the gold problem from above it is not hard to realize that this helps remarkably little as your advance further. Thank-you, but i’ll pass.

Gameplay PVE
The gameplay is pretty good (for a PVE mode), the graphics are quite good. The battle mechanics aren’t bad. They could use some polishing, or at least a walkthrough dungeon. The problem arises in… what else is there? I have never played a game where the grind is so obvious so early. Grind is okay, but it gets boring very quickly.

The game will never be able to attract whales either. The enormous investment without being able to show off just won’t materialize. You can read other threads to get an idea of the investment required. Summarized though, it would take about $1000 to level to lvl 12 (correct me if I am wrong here)

The only reason I can fathom for the slow levelling mechanics is that Ludia was forced to maintain a lvl cap of 20. If that is true, the game was doomed from the start and the executive who negotiated the deal with WofTC should be fired. I wouldn’t blame them for not disclosing this, but damn…

PVP
It is completely untenable for this game in its current form to be PVP. There is no true variability in the characters or equipment. If you use the PVE mechanics for PVP battle, it will come down to who has upgraded their equipment more, because they will all have the same equipment after some time.

All the successful PVP games rely of either of 2 things:

Skill

Paper, Scissors, Rock. Where the dev team introduces increasingly powerful of each type.

This game has neither.

Free to Play (FTP)
For those who can afford or don’t want to pay anything for a game, you cannot succeed in this game. It costs 1,500 gems to open a medium chest. It will take about 4-5 months at my current progression to do that. WTF!

I know that all micro-transaction games are ridiculous. It cost $70 to buy Elder Scrolls……worth every penny. $70 here will get you a small stat increase.

Suggestions

Be responsive in forums to those with valid or good comments. People may not like answers you give them, but it’s far better than being ignored, let people know you are reading them, it’s how you gain loyalty. Imagine if someone replied to someone and said, great idea Vovancho (player’s name), we’d like to incorporate that. Then maybe create a unique monster called Vovancho or an item called the Sword of Vovancho. Imagine the good feedback and suggestions you’d get then from your user base!

Decrease subscription price to $5

Show dice rolls for all attacks in an inconspicuous manner (hideable manner)

Increase difficulty of challenge dungeons after completion and increase the rewards commensurately. Say by 5% after each successful completion.

Make all challenge dungeons free.

** Most important short term fix: people need to level up, let them do it much more easily. By 2 or three months, I SHOULD be lvl 30-40. People need to have positive feedback in a game. Increase the difficulty with it. If there is a lvl 20 cap imposed on you, I’m so sorry….you’re screwed.

** Most important long term fix: Redesign the character management from the ground up. Allow random generation of hero stats. Let people upgrade their stats every 4 levels for example. Let people name their characters. Let characters die in special modes but the reward is great. Buy new heroes for xxx gold. Dismiss heroes. Cross character type equipment. (May only be usable by wizard or cleric for example). Random stat and skill objects (allow for future upgrades and melding opportunities)

Once the above is done, introduce PVP, then GUILDS, then GUILD WARS.

With some of the enhancements I wouldn’t probably complain about the gems as there is a mechanism that FTP can with work hard to achieve some parity with P(ay)T(o)P(lay) players. Someone who puts in 3-4 hours a day should be able to stay close (not beat) a PTP player.

Personal Plea
If a person is over x lvl, give them an option to sell off all the chaff in one easy swoop.

Very well written.
I think a PvP aspect would be cool, but likely impossible to balance. There are just too few options of characters and abilities. Co-op in some aspect would be amazing though.

I completely agree that the xp/gold system is still very much broken, and yes, it gets WAY worse as you level. It gets very Grindy.Your idea of increasing the difficulty of challenges is EXACTLY how the game used to be before the current incarnation. You would go as far as possible in increasingly difficult challenges, then get a chest that increased in rewards based on how far you went. It was infinitely better but the devs said they won’t go back to that*

My Lvl 5 to Lvl 6 woes. (That’s right folks, it’s a problem way down here at lvl 5)

It takes 3250xp to lvl up and costs 350 gp.

I cannot get past the first set of monsters past the 2nd boss in Sharpstone. So I get about 60xp per run and MAYBE 50 gold 1 out of 6 tries. At 3 runs per day, thats 180xp average. That’s 17 days+ to level up. Okay, I accept that.

To level up 4 characters, requires 1400gp. At an average rate of 8 gold per run it will take 175 days. WHAT!!! Fortunately I get a chest every 4 hours (maybe get it 3 times a day. One has to work/sleep), so I get 75gp per day. Looking at 83 gp per day with Sharpstone run = 16 days. Okay not as bad. BUT… I cannot upgrade equipment …

I cannot progress in the main quest, I die 90% of the time. So 10% of the time i get 5gp and 3 xp per peep. That won’t help much.

So really the only thing I can do for 17 days is play the free Sharpstone challenge and collect chests, maybe even get a quest that I can actually complete.